There were nine games this past weekend and every game had playoff implications for one or both teams playing and in some cases, a couple of other teams as well. That, by itself, is the first Awesome of the week. But there’s more!

Awesome

Close games!

On Friday night, three of the games were decided by two goals. The other was decided by four but only because of three goals in the last two minutes. Bandits/Mammoth were tied seven times, Rush/Roughnecks wasn’t that close through most of the game but Saskatchewan put up a good fight in the last few minutes to make it a two-goal game, Halifax/Vancouver was tied a couple of times in the third and fourth, and Panther City/San Diego were also tied seven times. San Diego scored three in the last minute and a half of the game but before that, it was anybody’s game.

Saturday’s games were less close but none were blowouts either. Only one game was separated by as much as five, and Rochester got to within two with six minutes left before a late Riptide rally, so it was pretty close as well.

On Sunday, Panther City led for most of the game, until the Wings got themselves back in it and tied it near the end of the third quarter, and even took a four-minute lead in the fourth. But Panther City was able to regain the lead and ended up winning by two.

Close games!

I missed the first half of the games in San Diego and Vancouver (because I was watching the earlier two games), but the second halves of both games were almost perfectly aligned. I had one playing on my laptop screen and the other on my tablet, and a couple of times in the fourth quarter, the game clocks of the two games were within five seconds of each other. Several times in the last 5 minutes, goals happened at the same time in both games. In one case, both games went to commercial at the same time, and played the same NLL store commercial. In another case, goals happened in both games with less than two minutes left so both went to an automatic review. The reviews ended at the same time and both refs held their arms in the air to signal a good goal at exactly the same time. This is not what we usually mean by “close games”.

However cool this coincidence was, it was likely unique to me and how close my devices were to live action. At one point I switched games on the laptop to the same one that was on the tablet, and the two streams of the same game were off by 30 seconds or so.

Unified standings!

After the games on Friday night, I ran my little clinch-detection app to see what the situation was, and found that Rochester, Calgary, and New York could finish anywhere from 3rd to 15th, Panther City could finish anywhere from 3rd to 14th, and Vancouver could finish anywhere from 4th to 14th.

Said another way, with 2½ weeks left in the season, there are three teams who could host a home game or finish dead last. Georgia clinched their spot on Saturday and Philadelphia was eliminated on Sunday but with two weeks left in the season, there are still four chairs left and nine teams waiting for the music to stop. The playoff race is going to come right down the wire this season, and that’s very awesome.

Rylan Hartley back

Rylan Hartley

After getting injured in the third game of the season, Rylan Hartley returned to the Rochester lineup on Saturday. The Rochester / New York game was the one I saw the least of, so perhaps this was mentioned on the broadcast but Riley Hutchcraft was put on the IR at the same time that Hartley was activated from it. Since Doug Buchan, not Hartley, started the game, I wonder if Hartley was brought back a touch earlier than they wanted because of the injury. But Hartley did get into the game, if only for twenty seconds, so the fact that he’s healthy enough to play, even if not at 100%, is pretty awesome.

Albany Attack jerseys

Throwback jerseys can be fun, particularly for those of us who were around the league when the originals were being used. The Rush used an update to the old Syracuse Smash jerseys earlier this year but since the Smash had the worst logo in the history of sports logos, it was more of a “it’s awesome because it’s so ugly” sort of thing.

The Albany Attack jerseys, however, were awesome because they were awesome. The colours were very different from the standard FireWolves colours, so it was a little odd to see the team in blue. It was very cool to see a few Attack jerseys in the crowd.

Not Awesome

Untimely penalties

The Mammoth were down by one with less than two minutes left in the fourth quarter, so obviously it’s critical that they play smart. Instead, the Mammoth take a too-many-men penalty, resulting in an automatic penalty shot. They got away with that thanks to a great stop by Dillon Ward (who then stepped over a fallen Josh Byrne when heading back to the bench – awesome), but then Warren Jeffrey took a spearing penalty and put his team on the PK at the worst possible time. Those totally avoidable penalties didn’t cost them the game, but you could argue that they cost the Mammoth the ability to come back.

In the first Calgary/Saskatchewan game, the Rush took a Too Many Men penalty right at the end of the fourth quarter, giving Calgary a penalty shot. There were three seconds left in the game and the Rush were already down by two so it didn’t really matter, but that particular penalty at the end of the fourth quarter is almost inexcusable. In game two, the Roughnecks took the same penalty, but just a bit earlier so no penalty shot was given. You could read Josh Sanderson’s lips on the bench: “How the f**k does that happen?” Good question.

Refs microphones

I’ve noticed this a couple of times this season but didn’t think about adding it here until I saw Ty Merrow’s tweet on Saturday night: “I do not understand how in 2024 we can’t get working microphones for referees in the NLL.” I get that technology is going to fail here and there but when was the last time you saw a game where the refs’ microphones didn’t cut out at least once? Maybe that’s too harsh and there’s probably confirmation bias involved here, but even so, it still happens more often than it should. This is relatively simple technology. If you go to a concert, whether it’s Taylor Swift or a Loverboy cover band at the local bar, you fully expect every microphone to work all the time and if they don’t, the microphone gets replaced and the problem is immediately solved. NLL refs’ mics have been flaky for years.

Also, the announcers can’t always hear the refs even if the mics are working. Frequently we’ll hear the announcers guessing on what the penalties are and I always wonder why they don’t listen to the refs who just explained it. Jake Elliott mentioned on a broadcast that they can’t always hear the PA announcements. A direct feed to the broadcast booth sounds like something that needs to be fixed as well.

Bots and AI

This is not a problem that’s specific to lacrosse. I recently tweeted something about Matt Vinc and a got a response from what appeared to be a porn bot. I can’t find the tweet now so I don’t know if it got deleted, but it was not an unrelated “N U D E S  I N  B I O” sort of thing. The response was directly related to what I had said in my tweet, and included a lacrosse emoji and a couple of hashtags that made sense in the context of both my tweet and the reply. The person’s bio contained a link to an onlyfans account (or something similar, I don’t remember what it was), and none of the person’s other tweets or responses had anything to do with lacrosse.

My guess is that the bot is using ChatGPT or some other AI to create a meaningful response to a random tweet, on the assumption that a response that looks “real” is more likely to get someone to click on their link than an obvious N U D E S spam response.

Part of this is awesome, in that it’s cool that AI is able to create such a thing. It’s sometimes obvious that it’s an AI and not a real person, but it’s not far off and getting better. But it’s also not awesome, since it will water down the responses to a tweet and make one suspicious of any response from a user you’re not already familiar with. Is this a real person responding, or a bot?

There are a lot of things that suck about social media, but in my opinion, one of the great things things about it is the ability to engage with people you don’t know, and for people like pro athletes to engage with fans. But if it gets hard enough to tell the difference between a real person who’s a fan and a bot looking for clicks, you may see people (or find yourself) dialing that engagement back, which kind of sucks.